Review of Dredd (2012) by Kevin P — 03 Aug 2018

Strengths: Honestly, I'm not big on the original Judge Dredd film, so I wasn't too excited coming into this. Thankfully, you don't need to know about the previous film to enjoy this one. Pete Travis does a masterful job crafting a film that looks great and is filled with action. There's a crazy string of almost non-stop action throughout the movie. Karl Ubran (Dredd) is great as the lead. Like the story, there's no fluff to what he did. It's to the point and pulls no punches. The real star is Olivia Thirlby (Cassandra Anderson) as a physic judge in training. She manages to portray the character as confident, yet just frightened enough of what's to come. Again, the strength of the movie is how they chose to tackle it headfirst. There was no nonsense and it was just balls to the wall action and violence. Just the way a movie like this should be.

Weaknesses: The plot isn't anything great. It's rather basic and straight forward. That works in its favor for the most part, but also holds it back at others. Lena Headey (Madeline "Ma-Ma" Madrigal) was kind of generic as the villain. It was as if almost anyone could have fit in that role. Speaking of forgettable villains, Wood Harris (Kay) played a henchman of Ma-Ma's and also felt a bit too cliché to stand out.

Overall: An action packed thrill ride that was deserving of a sequel ro at least something to continue the story. It's bloody fun and that's sometimes all you want from an action flick. It needed stronger villains to be a truly stellar movie, though.